Christian Aguilar App Launched One Year After His Murder

Published October 13th, 2013

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GAINESVILLE - One year ago family members of UF student Christian Aguilar got the call that a body had been found at a private hunting ground in Levy County. Now the Gainesville community comes together to celebrate the life of Christian, who was allegedly murdered by a friend. As his family continues to grieve, they're also finding ways to prevent what happened to their son, from happening again; and they're doing that with a phone application.

The Aguilar family has partnered with the Missing Children Global Network to launch an app that will help locate missing young ones. The app called Christian Aguilar Mobile Alert was released Sunday for Android users and is expected to be available for Apple users next week.

A year ago Christian Aguilar was found dead in a wooded area 30 minutes outside of Cedar Key. As a fellow gator, his story is one many UF students say they will never forget. Joselyn Rivas the UF Student Government Vice-President said, “I think it's important to recall Christian, honor his memory and let his family and everyone know that when you join the University of Florida, you're joining a second family."

While Christian was only a freshman at the University of Florida his family was presented with an "in memoriam degree" from the College of Engineering for their son.

Angela Lindner, Associate Dean for UF’s College of Engineering said, "This is actually the first degree that the University of Florida has presented that is in memoriam... As a result of a year worth of work from our faculty senate."

Before Christian's body was found on October 12th he went missing for more than 20 days. A feeling the Aguilar's say they don't wish on any parent. This is why the Missing Children Global Network and the Aguilar family worked together to create the Christian Aguilar Mobile Alert app.

Ricardo Barredo an advisory board member for Missing Children Global Network said, "If they see something, they can actually with their cell phones they can take a picture of what they think might be a tip or police and immediately forward it to authorities."

The Aguilar family says coming back to Gainesville doesn't bring them bad memories... In fact Christian's younger brother a senior in high school hopes to follow in his brother's footsteps by coming to UF. "When he came over here he was laughing, he was happy... He wanted to be here, he wanted to be a gator and we are a gator family and my son alexander will be a gator too," Aguilar said.

Pedro Bravo, the suspect in Christian's murder is currently in jail and faces multiple charges including homicide, kidnapping and poisoning edibles with the intent to kill. His trial has not been scheduled yet.